Period of Revolution
by Eevee
Summary: Sunny afternoons cannot last forever, and Minomon doesn't always manage to ignore the passing of time.


**Period of Revolution**

"Well," says Ken, and his voice has a strange tilt of resignation he rarely uses about his digimon partner, "There's nothing wrong with it, I guess. But honestly, Minomon, that's really… there are better things to watch, you know."

"But they aren't on when you are in school, Ken."

And who can argue that? So Ken smiles and tugs fondly on his antennae, and goes to his room to do homework. Minomon, who once used to be content watching from his bed because the day got so very long without Ken around, goes back to following the lives of the inhabitants of Sunset Beach.

One who is not so devoted is Demiveemon, who knows just enough of the story to never quite be up to date with what is happening. "So, it's really her parents' baby, only they don't know about it? How can they not know that it is their own baby?"

"It's only her mother's baby," Minomon explains, though he never quite understood the logics behind that mix up, "Her mother and her husband's. That's Caitlin's husband."

"Shouldn't he be having babies with Caitlin, then, instead of Caitlin's mother?"

"I think they were. But then there was a car accident, and the baby died. That's why she got a new one without telling the others."

"But why did she get her _mother's_ baby?"

That, Minomon cannot answer; he is glad that real humans aren't as complicated as those in the afternoon TV shows. Demiveemon only sighs a little, and turns his attention back to the screen. Outside, it's the sort of day one should be out playing soccer on, if one was a boy, or cheering one's partner on, if one is a digimon. But Davis is having problems in his math class, and Ken is good at getting his homework done quickly, and few are the digimon who finds advanced algebra fascinating. So Davis and Ken sits at the kitchen table, and Minomon and Demiveemon are in a pile on the sofa in front of the TV. The over-sized windows have slowly been building a drowsy heat in the living room, and Ken's mom is not at home to open the door to the balcony. Demiveemon is heavy on his back, but strange as it is, it's a comfortable kind of heavy, like Ken's arm around him when he is sleeping. It feels safer, somehow, to know that his DNA digivolve partner is near him, even if he's using him as the pillow that Ken's mom doesn't want in her living room.

"But it makes no sense," he suddenly complains, after it has moved on to the priest who fell in love with his brother's girlfriend. He slumps down a little more, and then pulls at Minomon's antennae a lot harder than Ken did before. "Doesn't her mother want her baby back?"

"I don't know," Minomon admits again, more interested in Antonio's worries than in slow uptake of Demiveemon. Demiveemon, for his part, shifts against him and looks sad when he turns his head to look.

"That can't end well," Demiveemon finally says, borrowing what seems to become Hawkmon's catch phrase these days.

"What can't end well? Is something wrong?" Davis is looking slightly disoriented, glancing up from his homework and the calculator and the yellow stickers hanging on to the papers that are scattered all over the table, with formulas and instructions written in Ken's neat kana.

"The TV show. They're all going to be so sad when they discover the truth."

There is a silence to that, which stretches so long that he forgets that it even is there as the girl who no longer can remember that she used to be married to her best friend's husband enters the room. "Demiveemon," Davis finally says with a slightly bemused smile, "there's no reason to take it so hard. It's not for real. And 'sides, it's that stupid soap opera Jun follows. It can't possibly be anything worth getting all depressed over."

"But the mother must be worried about her baby! What sort of mother would _not_ be worried about her baby, especially when it's disappeared?"

"Well, Demiveemon, you could always ask yourself what sort of mother would get pregnant with her daughter's husband in the first place." Ken says absently, and slaps another yellow sticker to a new page in Davis' notebook. Davis, for his part, looks at Ken with badly hidden repulsion.

"Please don't tell me that you have actually been _following_ that." But Ken's only reply is yet another note, this one with a lengthy explanation that uses much too many school words for Minomon to follow. And besides, it's about Caitlin and her baby again.

It is difficult to follow when it is about love and kissing, because Digimon don't do things that way, and they don't get so obsessed with it as humans in movies and Yolei do, either. He understands family, like Ken and Ken's mother and Ken's father, and he is glad that it is so infinitely much simpler than Olivia and Gregory and Gregory's new wife who is related to Olivia's best friend and stole the baby Olivia had with Caitlin's husband and gave it to Caitlin without telling her where she got it. Ken is growing up, he knows, and wonders if he is going to fall in love like Antonio did (only, Ken doesn't have a brother whose girlfriend is off limits). Almost all of the older digidestined have moved away from their families now, and are living on their own, and he knows that the day is nearing that he and Ken will be moving away from his mother and father, too. And he wonders, will it ever be like this again? If they move away, will it be the end of somnolent September afternoons with Demiveemon falling asleep on his back, and Davis using words that Ken's mother doesn't like to describe his teachers?

"Minomon, would you want a stolen baby? I sure wouldn't."

It is different for Digimon, because they never grow old. He can always digivolve, and the world is not so simple when he is Wormmon or Stingmon, and certainly never when they are Paildramon (although it's been years, he can still remember how it was like nothing else he had ever done, not like dying, maybe a little like when Ken found his digiegg again). But humans grow slower, and they don't turn back. He can already tell that Ken is turning into an adult, and he isn't going to turn into the cute little boy he once was when he gets tired. There are times when Minomon wishes that Davis and Ken were brothers, so that Davis and Demiveemon always could be with them. It is easier with Demiveemon around, because Veemon understands the things that he cannot explain to Ken. How could you ever tell him that you are afraid of his voice changing and his shoes growing too small, because you know that time has no mercy for humans? He loves Ken, but when he looks at Gregory's young wife, he remembers that Gregory once loved Olivia, too.

But then, he was there when Ken was the Digimon Emperor, and before it, and after, and even if Ken is not a little boy any longer, he is still _Ken_. And Davis is still Davis, even with his hair so long that he wears it in a ponytail these days, and even if they one day will grow old, with wrinkles and gray hair and a fondness for prune juice, Minomon thinks that they will still be themselves, even if the outsides look different and the insides doesn't work quite the same way as it always did.

It isn't always so easy to convince himself that it will be alright when he thinks like this, but he knows that as long as he isn't alone, he will be fine. And if everything else changes, he knows that one thing never will: Demiveemon will never stop being a little dim and a lot bored, and the weight he makes when he falls asleep on Minomon's back will always be welcome.


End file.
